1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a commodity management system for managing commodities, which are purchased by consumers, from commodity-selling times to commodity disposal times.
2. Description of Background Art
Efficient utilization of resources by recycling disposed products including vehicles and home electrical appliances has been proposed recently. To implement the recycling of disposed products, a system has been studied. This system includes writing recycling information of a product into an IC tag at a disposal time and attaching the tag to the disposed product at a dealer (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-263024, paragraph numbers [0022] and [0034] and FIG. 1).
The IC tag is a device allowing data to be written therein and data already stored therein to be read out in a non-contact way by using radio communication technology. In the case of the example described above, recycling information of a disposed product includes information on the consumer using the product, a recycling fee, data required to disassemble the product and data of the dealer selling the product. An inquiry about the recycling fee and the data required to disassemble the product can be made by fetching a product number attached on the product and transmitting the product number to a management center. By using this system, it is possible to prevent a disposed product from being lost in the course of a recycling process and a product from being dumped illegally.
In addition, a system for attaching an IC tag to each motorcycle to avoid thefts of motorcycles has also been studied (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-337662, paragraph numbers [0019] and [0022] and FIG. 1). A code assigned to each motorcycle is stored in advance in the IC tag. The dealer transmits information on the purchaser to a management center at a purchasing time of a motorcycle. The management center creates a database associating a code assigned to a motorcycle with information on the owner of the motorcycle. If a dubious motorcycle is detected, a code assigned to the motorcycle is read out from the IC tag by using an IC-tag reader and, by transmitting an inquiry specifying the code to the management center, it is possible to determine whether or not the dubious motorcycle is a stolen one.
With the method of writing recycling information into an IC tag at a disposal time, however, it is impossible to confirm that a person executing a procedure for disposing a commodity is the true owner of the commodity. It is thus quite within the bounds of possibility that the disposal procedure for a commodity is executed against the will of the owner of the commodity, and a procedure is executed for disposing a wrong commodity. In addition, even by transmitting an inquiry specifying a code assigned to a commodity, it is difficult to determine whether or not a person executing a procedure for disposing the commodity is the true owner of the commodity. In particular, if a used commodity is resold to another owner, it becomes impossible to determine the true owner of the commodity.